Underworlds: Tales of Paranormal Lust. Various

the two of them sitting up long into the night, sparring verbally – and when he passed her test she lay with him to get a child worthy to be her own heir. Oh yes: a wise sorcerer-king for the great realm of Sheba; that was what she desired. The moment she knew she was carrying, she was out of that place. Before he could imprison her too, I do not doubt, and keep the child for his own.

      I do not want to think about him. Remembrance fills me with such ire that the binding spells he wrought upon me – those words he etched onto my skin – burn and gnaw at my flesh, searing me to the bone. If I could, I would tear off my hide and incinerate it in the inner fires of the Earth, and then I would be free of him.

      But what is written is written.

      * * *

      She summons me forth once more. This time I am indoors, and cannot grow to my full height. I rein myself in before I smash through the carved cedar beams of the roof.

      There is a squealing and a shrieking, a flurry of panic at my arrival. I look down and see the room is full of women. It makes me grin to see them shrink away and cover their faces – though several are peeking through the slits of their fingers, and that makes me grin too. I have arrived clothed, because Bilqis commands me thus, but my silken trousers do not fully disguise the extent of my exuberance. They are all young and lovely; their breasts bare and firm, their shapely thighs and rounded bottoms a field of delight that my rampant share urges me to plough. In Solomon’s palace, I would assume that this is the apartment of his concubines. Here in Sheba, they must be the queen’s handmaidens. It is clear they have not been expecting the arrival of any male, and their consternation is enchanting. I wish to rush in among them like a cockerel among a flock of hens.

      ‘Djinni!’

      I force my attention back to Bilqis, who kneels upon cushions in the middle of this fluttering crowd, with a slender maiden cradled in her arms. ‘Mistress?’

      She’s dressed less formally today. I can see her ebony nipples through the damp and clinging gauze of her robe. I understand that the land of Sheba is considered punishingly hot by humans. ‘Djinni,’ says she, ‘my slave here has been bitten by a viper. Can you heal her?’

      The girl in her arms is twisting with pain, her dark skin grey now and glistening with sweat. I can see her injured foot, swollen to twice its natural size, propped upon a cushion.

      ‘Pray to the God of Solomon, mistress,’ I suggest sourly. ‘Does He not promise to be merciful?’

      ‘I have. And to Shams and Ilmaqah and Athtar, who rule this land. The gods do not answer me. So if it lies within your power, djinni, I command you to heal this maid.’

      I briefly consider some way to twist her words, but my heart is not in it. I am too distracted by the perfumed, quivering throng of women. And the girl is pretty, for a human, or will be so when well. I twitch a single finger – mostly to show how easy this is for me – and the poison hisses out of her, issuing as a faint green cloud from her open lips. Her leg reverts instantly to healthy flesh.

      Everyone in the room utters a wahwahwah of wonder. Except Bilqis, who smiles and nods, and the girl, who sobs and buries her face in her queen’s breasts.

      ‘There, there,’ says the monarch of all Sheba, both left and right of the Red Sea. ‘You are fine. No need to cry, my sweet one.’

      And my eyes widen as the maid pulls down the fine gauze of the queen’s robe and sucks a big nipple into her mouth.

      Bilqis closes her own eyes for a moment in pleasure, then opens them, meeting my gaze with a long, considering look. ‘You did well, djinni,’ she says. ‘It pleases me to reward you.’ With a couple of clicks of her fingers she jerks two of the women at the side of the chamber from their knees. ‘You two: see to his pleasure.’

      I’m taken aback, but far from dismayed. The young women are curvaceous of body and beautiful of face, and they advance towards me with rapidly rising and falling breasts, bright-eyed but gratifyingly nervous.

      ‘It would help, djinni,’ says the queen in a dry voice, ‘if you were to assume the size of a mortal man.’

      I comply, shrinking my towering form down from the ceiling, until I am only the size of a very large man. The two handmaidens kneel before me on the cushioned floor, and reach for my hidden weapon, wetting their lips as they tug at my clothes. They are eager to obey their queen, I note, approving.

      ‘Do not hurt them, djinni,’ Bilqis adds as an afterthought.

      I bare my sharp teeth in a grin at her. But I clasp my wrists at the small of my back, safely out of the way.

      Then the handmaids lay hold of their prize; one cupping my big balls, the other stroking my thick shaft. Both of them vie for the right to suck my glans, and most stimulating it is to watch them fight for the honour; their lips wrestling over the crown of my manhood, their tongues lashing and sliding over the veined pillar of my magnificence. Teasing fingers stroke my balls and the skin behind. I let out a groan of appreciation. These two are not ignorant of the bodies of men, clearly.

      And it is so long since I have known carnal pleasure. Years now, trapped in that Lamp. My sap rises swiftly. I look up from the two bobbing heads at my crotch, just to distance myself and prolong the delight, but the broader view does not provide distraction. Every woman in that room is watching me, looking at my body and my cock and their two sisters sucking and slurping at it. Their eyes are wide, drinking in the sight. Their full, moist lips are parted. Their soft breasts heave with each breath they take. Some look entranced; some wary; some hungry. Even the queen herself wears a faint smile, though the maid she is suckling at her breasts is kissing with such vigour that Bilqis’ expression appears somewhat unfocused.

      My bow is at full stretch, straining for release. I can feel my balls tighten, their hot wet burden ready to be spilled. My thighs are so taut they tremble. I look down once more and see my two handmaidens are taking it in turn to run their tongues up the length of my cock, each swallowing the head, sucking it lovingly, and then letting it go just in time for the other girl to engulf it.

      ‘Yes, oh yes,’ I growl, fire swimming in my veins. ‘That is right, you Whores of the Earth! This is your place, all of you!’

      ‘Stop,’ says Bilqis sharply.

      In an instant the two girls draw away, leaving my cock standing bereft and waving wetly. My vision swims. I can feel the flame burning in my blood turn to pain. I can feel my balls clenching. I turn to the queen with a snarl.

      ‘I give, and I take away,’ Bilqis says, brushing the girl from her as she stands. The queen has a wrathful glitter in her eye. ‘Get back into your Lamp, djinni.’

      I have no choice but to obey.

      * * *

      Inside my prison it is not cramped. Or at least, it’s not a constriction of the body, there being no body in this place. But it is dark, and it is lonely. I may light it with suns and build within it worlds of my imagining, but the mind grows weary in time. I walk the star-strewn halls of artifice and replay the wild events of memory, but I speak to no one but myself.

      I understand that the Children of Earth dream, and in their dreaming minds meet with those who are not themselves – gods and tricksters, lost friends and the forgotten dead. It is not like that for the Djinn. We do not dream.

      It is possible for me to look out from my cell, and see all that the wavering flame at the tip illuminates. But Bilqis has me kept in an empty room, and I rarely bother. I create in my prison a woman of gold who moves and walks and does as I command her, and I fashion her in the form of my captor. Upon that golden body I heap every indignity I can conceive of – but without the sensations of the flesh, and without her having will or thought or speech of her own, there is no satisfaction in it and no release for me. I burn, and I will burn for ever. My Lamp will never go out.

      * * *

      The next time Bilqis calls me from my prison, the hand of night lies upon the Earth. I stand in a chamber I have never seen before, which contains a great